Tomato B- |
A Scanner Darkly (2006) |
"A head-trip that never gets beneath the skin." |
Keith Phipps |
Splat C |
Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker (2006) |
"Bond-for-kids done with some obvious budget restrictions..." |
Keith Phipps |
Splat D+ |
Alien Trespass (2009) |
"There’s no shortage of either the originals or imitators, so why make Alien Trespass, a send-up of second-shelf ’50s sci-fi so straight-faced, it could almost pass as the real thing?" |
Keith Phipps |
Splat C- |
Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) |
"There's just not enough here for a movie. It's almost as if some ideas were meant to live for three and a half minutes each Christmas season, not to get stretched to the breaking point for 50 years." |
Keith Phipps |
Splat C- |
Aquamarine (2006) |
"Everyone looks like they're struggling to appear human, and only one has a huge, fishy tail as an excuse." |
Keith Phipps |
Splat D+ |
Arthur and the Invisibles (2007) |
"[Arthur and the Invisibles is] a film for kids who want to know what headaches feel like." |
Keith Phipps |
Tomato B |
Ashes of Time Redux (1994) |
"Provides a fascinating glimpse down a path perhaps advisedly not taken." |
Keith Phipps |
Tomato |
Ashik Kerib (1988) |
"[Paradjanov] recreates the past with an exaggerated sense of myth and magic." |
Keith Phipps |
Tomato A- |
Atonement (2007) |
"With the Ian McEwan novel adaptation Atonement, it's obvious that Joe Wright -- who made his big-screen debut with 2005's deft, affecting version of Pride & Prejudice -- knows how to shepherd a novel to the screen." |
Keith Phipps |
Splat C |
Australia (2008) |
"It almost goes without saying that the film looks gorgeous, but the filmmaking behind it feels unsure how to work on this grand a scale. Australia is big. But it never fills the screen." |
Keith Phipps |
Tomato |
Autumn Sonata (1978) |
"Autumn Sonata can finally be seen as an austerely beautiful meditation on death and the not-always-realized possibility of reconciliation across generations." |
Keith Phipps |
Splat |
Air Doll (2009) |
"This follow-up, despite having been in the works for years, feels a tad rushed." |
Mike D'Angelo |
Splat C+ |
A/K/A Tommy Chong (2005) |
"What could have been either a scathing critique of the drug war or an intimate portrait of a stoner facing mortality instead comes off as a fawning infomercial for its subject." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato C+ |
Adam (2009) |
"The film is afflicted with a fatal case of the cutes: It’s never an encouraging sign when The Little Prince, that eternal touchstone of precious perma-children, emerges as a major motif for a romantic drama." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato B |
Adam Resurrected (2008) |
"Even when it flies off the rails deep into its third act, Resurrected remains strangely hypnotic." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato A- |
Adventureland (2009) |
"Adventureland refreshingly inhabits a world without clear-cut heroes or bad guys, just richly realized characters struggling to get by." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato B- |
Akeelah and the Bee (2006) |
"If [director] Atchison's well-acted, good-intentioned crowd-pleaser can trick even one moviegoer into thinking that knowledge and spelling are somehow cool, then his film will be performing a societal good that offsets its slack reliance on formula." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato B- |
Al Franken: God Spoke (2006) |
"A fascinating combination of class clown and fact-happy debate-club president, Franken nonetheless makes for a compelling subject, but God Spoke veers uncomfortably into hagiography, especially as it winds down." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat F |
All About Steve (2009) |
"It’s a celebration of brazen nonconformity centered on an insufferable flibbertigibbet who makes the worst case for nonconformity imaginable." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat C- |
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009) |
"Betty Thomas delivers pretty much the bare minimum: peppy, brightly colored, tune-filled nonsense sure to meet the low, low standards of its pre-kindergarten core audience." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato B |
Amazing Grace (2007) |
"Apted's unexpected crowd-pleaser is inspirational, but also surprisingly entertaining." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat D |
America The Beautiful (2008) |
"Perhaps in future exposes Roberts will uncover that ice is cold and furnaces hot." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat D |
America: Freedom To Fascism (2006) |
"Yes, America: Freedom To Fascism gives the Michael Moore muckraking-underdog treatment to the kind of delirious conspiracy theories generally associated with mentally ill homeless people screaming at passersby to stop stealing their brainwaves." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat B- |
American Dreamz (2006) |
"Great satires draw blood. American Dreamz barely nicks the surface." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat D |
An American Haunting (2006) |
"It's never an encouraging sign when a horror movie based on a true story fatally lacks the verisimilitude of, say, Alone In The Dark." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato A- |
An Education (2009) |
"An Education shares with Hornby’s best work trenchant insight into the way smart, hyper-verbal young people let the music, films, books, and art they love define themselves as they figure out who they are and what they want to be." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat D |
Angel-A (2007) |
"Even though it looks like art, it plays like schlock." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat C- |
The Answer Man (2009) |
"The Answer Man combines the worst of both worlds: It offers the ugly digital video, negligible production values, and manufactured grit of a Sundance loser with the pandering formula, sentiment, and romantic-comedy clichés of Hollywood pap." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato B+ |
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theatres (2007) |
"Its absurdist scenarios serve as little more than a ramshackle frame for bizarre non sequiturs, stoned pop-culture riffing, and some of the weirdest gags ever to make it into a studio-released film." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat C- |
The Architect (2006) |
"The Architect wears its heavy social consciousness like an albatross, and Tauber's plodding, earnest direction does little to wean the material away from its stage roots." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato B |
Are We Done Yet? (2007) |
"It isn't gangsta, but it's winning all the same." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat |
Are We There Yet? (2005) |
"Are We There Yet? all too effectively conveys the claustrophobic horror of being shackled in a small space with two whiny, hateful children." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato |
The Aristocrats (2005) |
"Within a single joke, The Aristocrats unlocks an entire universe of comedy." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato B- |
Art & Copy (2009) |
"Art & Copy is mightily diverting, for those who don’t mind being sold a slick bill of goods." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato B- |
Art School Confidential (2006) |
"Art School Confidential constitutes two-thirds of a worthy follow-up to Ghost World, but it doesn't feel nearly as substantial." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat C- |
August (2008) |
"August is a brooding, boring indie drama about the death of the culture-wide hallucination that was the dot-com bubble, and the moment when countless dot-com millionaires on paper became real-life paupers." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat D+ |
August Rush (2007) |
"Schmaltzy and borderline insufferable." |
Nathan Rabin |
Tomato |
The Aviator (2004) |
"It's a measure of The Aviator's complexity and ambiguity that it can be read equally as a celebration of rugged, capitalist individualism and as a leftist critique of cutthroat free-market competition." |
Nathan Rabin |
Splat B- |
Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story (2007) |
"This is a fascinating, underreported piece of recent world history, but Patty Kim and Chris Sheridan's documentary Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story doesn't do it full justice." |
Noel Murray |
Splat C |
Accepted (2006) |
"It isn't the predictability that drags [Accepted] down so much as the complete lack of spark." |
Noel Murray |
Tomato B+ |
Afghan Star (2009) |
"If nothing else, Afghan Star offers a reminder of how much has changed in Afghanistan from the late ’70s -- when Kabul was a secular-oriented city with co-ed universities and a thriving nightclub scene -- to the rise of the Taliban." |
Noel Murray |
Splat |
After Innocence (2005) |
"Taylor does her cause no real favors by trotting out only the most articulate, most clearly railroaded exonerees." |
Noel Murray |
Splat B- |
After The Wedding (2007) |
"After The Wedding could be the cinematic equivalent of a Coldplay song. And while that isn't necessarily a slam, it isn't a recommendation either." |
Noel Murray |
Splat C- |
Agnes and His Brothers (2006) |
"It says something about Roehler's vision for Agnes And His Brothers that he didn't think much about the movie's centerpiece character, beyond the simplistic irony of having the family transsexual be the most normal." |
Noel Murray |
Tomato B- |
Alexandra (2008) |
"Aleksandr Sokurov's anti-war drama Alexandra opens with a curious image and spends 90 minutes squeezing it for all it's worth." |
Noel Murray |
Splat D+ |
All The King's Men (2006) |
"[Zaillian] has made a movie about monsters, not men, and in 2006, it's the men we most need to fear." |
Noel Murray |
Splat C |
Allah Made Me Funny (2008) |
"Ultimately, Allah only made these guys mildly likable." |
Noel Murray |
Tomato B |
The Amazing Truth about Queen Raquela (2008) |
"A kind of postmodern, grown-up fairytale: a Cinderella story for the reality-TV age." |
Noel Murray |
Tomato B+ |
American Cannibal - The Documentary (2006) |
"American Cannibal is ostensibly about the phony, exploitative nature of reality TV, and though documentarians Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro hit that point too hard by piling up interviews with TV experts who speak in exaggerated cautionary tones," |
Noel Murray |
Splat C- |
American Gun (2002) |
"[It's] what happens when a director makes a movie based on what he imagines to be true, instead of what's actually so." |
Noel Murray |
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